Police Arrest Top Suspect In Reporter's Kidnapping

KARACHI, Pakistan -- The top suspect in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl has been captured and has told police the captive correspondent remains alive.

The arrest of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh on Tuesday afternoon in the northeastern city of Lahore came after Sheikh returned to a family member's home, where authorities lay in wait.

"We were on a stakeout Tuesday morning," said Javed Noor, deputy inspector general of police in Lahore. "We sat outside the home until Sheikh showed up. He was not surprised."

The arrest raised hopes that Pearl, 38, would be freed soon, three weeks after his disappearance in this port city where he came to investigate alleged connections between an extremist Islamic group and "shoe bomber" suspect Richard Reid. But it was not immediately clear whether Sheikh gave investigators details on Pearl's whereabouts.

Soon after his arrest, investigators transferred Sheikh to Karachi under heavy guard and appeared to be hustling to resolve the kidnapping case that has added tension to U.S.-Pakistani relations. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is in Washington for a meeting today with President Bush.

Aided by FBI agents, police from Punjab province, where Lahore is located, tracked down Sheikh by studying records of phone calls made by two Sheikh associates arrested in Islamabad, Noor said. The suspects, whose names have not been released, made numerous cell-phone calls to the house where Sheikh was apprehended.

A 27-year-old British citizen, Sheikh has ties to Pakistani Islamic extremist groups as well as the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Indian intelligence officials suspect he is behind an attack last month on the American Center in Calcutta and think he may have wired money to Mohamed Atta, a suspected ringleader of the suicide hijack attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Three men have been charged as accomplices to Pearl's kidnapping after investigators discovered evidence that they sent two e-mails on the abduction from the National Movement to Restore Pakistani Sovereignty. One or more of those suspects told authorities they sent the messages at Sheikh's behest, according to investigators.